Your residential status decides what India can tax — only your Indian income, or everything you earn anywhere. It is not about your passport or where you live. It is a day count, plus two rules most calculators still ignore.
Section 6 carried into the Income-tax Act, 2025 unchanged when it replaced the 1961 Act on 1 April 2026, so the tests below are the current ones.
Only income that arises in India or is received in India is taxable here. Your salary abroad, foreign bank interest and overseas investments sit outside the Indian return. A return is still due here if that Indian income crosses the exemption limit, and tax already deducted at source on it comes back only by filing one.
Indian income is taxable; foreign income generally is not, unless it comes from a business controlled from India or a profession set up here. It is usually the most favourable status, and it is temporary — the year it ends is worth knowing in advance.
Worldwide income is taxable in India, and foreign assets and accounts have to be reported in Schedule FA. Omitting them is what creates Black Money Act exposure, where the penalty is flat and does not scale down with the size of the omission.
The Finance Act 2020 changed this for higher-income NRIs, and a lot of online tools still apply the old test. If you are an Indian citizen or person of Indian origin visitingIndia and your Indian income is above ₹15 lakh, the threshold that makes you resident drops from 182 days to 120. Separately, an Indian citizen with Indian income above ₹15 lakh who is not liable to tax in any other country is deemed residentregardless of how few days they spent here.
Both of those catch people who have been confidently non-resident for years. If either might apply to you, it is worth a conversation rather than a form.